The Mental Health Crisis Is In Response to a Sick Society • OP News

The mental health crisis in America is undeniable. Suicide rates are climbing. Anxiety and depression have reached epidemic levels. The statistics are devastating, and the suffering is real.

Often, media and government reports reflect this data, yet act like the cause is some 5th dimensional being that can’t be comprehended.

Anyone who lives in the real world can easily see what the most significant causes are.

Cost of Living

Do you feel financial stress on a regular basis? If so, you are certainly not alone. As you will see below, a new survey has discovered that more than two-thirds of the entire country is feeling “anxiety and depression” due to financial stress. The cost of living is totally out of control, and it is absolutely crushing the middle class.

The official rate of inflation has gone up again. Apparently it was the largest increase in five months, but I don’t put much stock in the official government numbers because I know how much they have been manipulated. In fact, the formula for calculating the official rate of inflation has been altered dozens of times since Jimmy Carter was in the White House.

Every time they change the formula the goal is to make inflation look lower than it actually is. To me, what really matters are the prices that we are hit with on a day to day basis, and those prices have been skyrocketing.

I am old enough to remember when summer vacations were actually affordable. Gasoline was under a dollar a gallon, and you could stay at cheap motels for less than 20 dollars a night as you drove across the nation. I’m not some boomer by the way, I turned 30 not too long ago.

But these days even a vacation that lasts for just a few days can put you deep into debt…

“After stepping off the plane in Nashville, having paid far more than expected for your flight, the rental car desk awaits.
Four days with a Toyota Camry costs $670. A Starbucks coffee on the way to the hotel is another $7.
Your budget hotel somehow costs $500 for the weekend, breakfast not included. Eating out for dinner means the day’s spending is comfortably into four figures.”

Who can afford that?

Summer vacations have become a thing of the past for much of the population, and that is extremely unfortunate. Of course the cost of just about everything else has been rapidly rising as well.

Let me give you some examples.

For the past five years, U.S. home prices have been rising at a pace of almost 10 percent a year…

“Over the past five years, U.S. home values have increased by roughly 8–9% per year on average, while over the past ten years, they’ve risen about 6–7% per year on average. In other words, national home prices saw an exceptionally rapid climb in recent years, far above historical norms.”

I can understand why so many people are so frustrated right now. The average price of a home in the United States has now risen above half a million dollars. But they keep telling us that inflation is low.

Give me a break.

Health insurance has also been getting a lot more expensive…

“Average monthly premiums for families with employer-provided health coverage in California’s private sector nearly doubled over the last 15 years, from just over $1,000 in 2008 to almost $2,000 in 2023, a KFF Health News analysis of federal data shows. That’s more than twice the rate of inflation. Also, employees have had to absorb a growing share of the cost.
The spike is not confined to California. Average premiums for families with employer-provided health coverage grew as fast nationwide as they did in California from 2008 through 2023, federal data shows. Premiums continued to grow rapidly in 2024, according to KFF.”

Who can afford a monthly health insurance premium of $2,000?

Don’t even get me started on the price of food.

There was a time when some Americans would actually purchase dog food to eat in an attempt to cut costs, but now even the price of dog food has soared into the stratosphere…

“The average unit price of dog food was $5.78 in 2021, but last month the figure was $8.42.”

Rising food prices are the number one reason why the number of Americans facing food insecurity has nearly doubled over the past four years.

Anyone that actually believes that things are “fine” is simply not living in reality.

Things are so bad that approximately one-fourth of the U.S. population is now using “buy now, pay later” loans to pay for everyday living expenses…

“A growing number of consumers are taking out “buy now, pay later,” or BNPL, loans to cover everyday living expenses, data shows, a sign of the precarious financial state facing many U.S. households.
A quarter of Americans now use BNPL loans to pay for groceries, up 14% from last year, according to a recent survey from LendingTree. The personal finance firm also found that more people are using such financing to pay for clothing, technology and housewares.”

Of course once those companies get you hooked, they will hammer you with high interest rates. But many Americans are just desperate to find a way to survive from month to month.

According to one recent survey, almost 70 percent of the population is feeling “anxiety and depression” because of their finances…

“Americans are feeling increasingly uneasy about their financial future.
Nearly 7 in 10 (69%) say financial uncertainty has led them to feelings of anxiety and depression, according to a recent survey from Northwest Mutual — an 8-percentage-point increase from 2023.”

Other surveys have come up with similar results.

For example, here is one that found that “65% of middle-income Americans believe their income has not kept pace with rising expenses”.

Middle‑income Americans are still adjusting to a higher cost of living and ongoing financial pressures, according to the latest Primerica® U.S. Middle‑Income Financial Security Monitor™ (FSM™). The survey finds that 65% of middle-income Americans believe their income has not kept pace with rising expenses — a sentiment that has remained remarkably consistent for more than four years, highlighting the challenges families feel as prices outpace paychecks.

“Middle‑income families are making tough decisions every day to cover the essentials and save for the future, and it continues to shape how they perceive the overall economy, with many feeling less confident and more cautious about what lies ahead,” said Glenn J. Williams, CEO of Primerica. “That makes it even more important for families to seek sound financial advice. A financial professional can help families find the money in their budgets, reprioritize expenses and build a realistic path to save for the future. Even starting with a small amount can make a significant difference over time.”

And that same survey discovered that 80 percent of middle-income Americans rate the economy poorly.

“Middle‑income Americans continue to rate the economy poorly. More than three-quarters (80%) rate it negatively — a figure that has remained consistent over the past year. Amid ongoing economic uncertainty, a strong majority (83%) say they want to take steps to protect themselves financially for the long term — yet only 36% are actually doing so.”

If you are feeling constant stress because of the state of your own personal finances, I want you to understand that there are tens of millions of other Americans that are in the exact same boat.

Decades of very foolish decisions have brought us to this point, and the American people should be very upset at those that are responsible for bringing this crisis upon us.

Mainstream Media Won’t Tell You the Truth About America’s Economy

Not Being Able to Afford a Family

It’s no secret that having children can be mind-bogglingly expensive. When you start looking at the total costs that you’re likely to pay as a parent, you’ll be forgiven if your jaw drops. According to recent research, it would take parents over $310k to raise a child until the age of 17.

Working mother-of-four Paige Connell (@sheisapaigeturner) is well-known online for sharing childcare, marriage, and motherhood advice. She went viral after filming a video in which she explained that one of the major reasons why people in the United States are having fewer children may be linked to the massive costs of childcare and daycare.

As per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 3.7 million babies were born in the United States in 2022. That year, the country had a birth rate of 11 per 1k people and a fertility rate of 56 births per 1k women aged 15 to 44 years old. Nearly a third (32.1%) of all births in the US that year were cesareans.

Investopedia reports that the average middle-income family with two children will spend around $310,605 to raise a child who was born in 2015 all the way until 2032, when they reach the age of 17. This is a massive spike from 2015, when that same average cost stood at ‘just’ $233,610.

Housing (including mortgage or rent payments, taxes, insurance, repairs, utilities, maintenance, and household goods) makes up a whopping 32% of these expenses. The average American household spent $25,436 on housing per year in 2023. Meanwhile, the median household income in the US, as per the US Census Bureau, was $80,610 that year.

Food costs can eat up (no pun intended) between 15% to 24% of the family’s income. A lot depends on the quality and quantity of the food that you buy, where you live, what your diet is like, how often you go out to eat versus cooking at home, and other factors.

Meanwhile, childcare can cost between 7% to 23% of the family’s income. There’s lots of variability here because different families have different circumstances. How much you pay for daycare, for instance, will depend on whether both parents are working, whether any relatives live nearby to help with the babysitting, the number of children you have, where you live, etc.

“In 2022, costs ranged from $5,357 for school-age home-based care in small counties to $17,171 for infant center-based care in large counties,” Investopedia notes.

The shocker is that the $310k+ cost to raise a child does not include the costs of getting higher education in college. Again, the costs can vary quite a bit depending on the type of school (public versus private), the length of the program (two versus four years), and the specific institution itself.

Generally speaking, the average annual cost for the 2024-2025 academic year for a public in-state college was $24,920 (including tuition, fees, and room and board). Compare that to the average $58,600 you’re likely to spend per year for a private college.

Aside from this, you’ll also have to factor in other costs like clothing, insurance, transportation, healthcare, sports, vacations, family trips hobbies, and extracurricular activities. To reiterate: raising your children and taking care of their higher education is incredibly expensive in the US.

CNN reported that placing two kids at a childcare center in 2023 costs at least 25% more than the typical average rent in every state in the US. Moreover, you could expect to pay at least twice as much as the average rent in 11 states and the District of Columbia.

In 2023, the average annual cost of care rose by 3.7% compared to 2022, reaching a jaw-dropping $11,582 per child.

Referring to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Pew Research Center notes that the price of daycare and preschool rose around 22% between January 2020 and September 2024.

In one 2022 survey, a fifth of parents who needed childcare reported that there were times in the past year when they didn’t have enough money to pay for those services.

On the flip side, couples barely have to spend anything in Germany (1%) and Estonia (0%). In Germany, the average annual cost of childcare comes out to $1,425 per year or just under $118 per month, according to the WEF. And in Estonia, children are entitled to highly subsidized kindergarten places from 18 months old until they are 7 years old. That means that full-time childcare will set families back as little as $19 per week!

Why the Birth Rate Decline Is Actually a Good Thing

Social Media

Research also shows correlations between excessive use of social media and mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, loneliness and sleep deprivation. According to researchers, red flags that your social media use may be detrimental include:

Excessive time spent on social media detracts from other areas of your life
Feeling addicted to social media
Comparing yourself to others
Compulsively checking for updates

The importance of losing sleep shouldn’t be underestimated, either. Lack of sleep can negatively impact social-emotional functioning and cognition, making healthy decisions increasingly difficult as you grow more fatigued with each passing night.

Forming an Addiction

The promise of social media is the connection it offers. It allows far flung friends and family members to celebrate births, weddings and graduations. It offers platforms for learning and creates opportunities for like-minded people in disparate communities to interact and organize.

However, that relentless promise of connection and external reinforcement can activate the brain’s reward system in ways that are similar to gambling—with accompanying feelings of withdrawal or distress when you try to stop, according to a study in BMC Psychiatry. The unpredictable rewards of likes and comments or the possibility of stumbling on stories that boost your mood reinforce the impulse to continually check in or post online.

Social media platforms are engineered to keep you engaged through features like infinite feeds, push notifications and algorithms that can precisely predict what content will keep you captivated and scrolling.

If social media helped you deal with stress or loneliness in the past, turning back to it when you’re feeling down makes a lot of sense. The urge to check in can become habitual, and each time a click relieves negative emotions, odds increase that you will crave that source of relief again, night after night.

Comparing Yourself to Others

A deep depression, a constant dissatisfaction for life, and a sensation like you aren’t enough are all potential symptoms of social media.

We all have certain triggers that can cause our confidence to take a sudden nosedive.

For some, it’s a trip to the gym. If you’re self-conscious of your body, watching fit people strut their stuff in their tightest fitting gym clothes likely has you over analyzing your every body part.

For others, it may be a certain individual—a family member, friend, or enemy that, for whatever reason, leaves them with the dreaded feeling that they just aren’t enough.

We all know the gut wrenching feeling that arises when we see or hear something that immediately has us second guessing our appearance, personality, or skill set.

Unfortunately, social media provides us with numerous platforms that help to quickly trigger that unpleasant self-disdain.

Before I stopped obsessing over my posts, Facebook used to remind me of just how powerful a determinant it was to my confidence level.

I found myself comparing all aspects of my life, both internal and external, to a people I had never even met. I didn’t realize just how illogical this was until I explained it to someone, and, now as I type, I’m reminded even further. Regardless of how illogical these comparisons may be, our emotional responses to such images can be so strong that they completely overpower our sense of logic.

The reality is, people are constantly showcasing the best aspects of their life onto social media.

The arrival of a new baby and a recent trip to the Caribbean are both ideal picture-posting occasions. But do these same people post photos of 2 a.m. feedings or lost luggage? Not often, because that wouldn’t show them in an ideal light, but it would provide a sense of reality.

Reality is what is lost on social media. We emphasize the best versions of ourselves instead of the real versions.

Life can be hard, ugly, and downright depressing at times. But those likely aren’t the adjectives most of us would use to describe the photos we post onto our accounts.

The feeling of lack and dissatisfaction that we feel when scrolling through our newsfeed often results from comparing our true reality to our “friends’” idealized, perfectly Instagramed realities.

We are using the same scale to measure two entirely different realities. However, we fail to step back and recognize just how wildly unfair and unrealistic these comparisons actually are.

Dating Apps

Once upon a time, going on a date with a stranger you met online was a wild idea. But times and the dating game have changed: There are dating apps that cater to every niche personality trait (Farmer’s Only? Veggly? OK!), helping people find love or casual hookups faster and easier than ever. At least, that’s what they’re supposed to do.

So maybe it’s surprising that only 28% of people surveyed in the U.S. who used a dating site or app reported feeling hopeful between 2018 and 2019, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Meanwhile 45% reported feeling frustrated. And if you want to know what people are saying about the digital dating world in real-time, the #Ihateddatingapps TikTok hashtag currently has nearly 1.2 million likes.

One big reason behind this frustration could be that many users aren’t crystal clear about why they’re using the apps, says licensed therapist Alo Johnston, LMFT. So it’s normal to feel like you’re getting rejected over and over when, in reality, the dating pool for people with similar intentions to you is smaller than you might’ve thought. Which, yeah, can make you feel incredibly discouraged about finding a person who gets you.

Velvet, 41, says using the apps made her feel like she was on the verge of losing hope in the opposite sex. “I got tired of ghosting, blocking, carrying convos, and, most of all, starting the talking stage over a million times,” she says. “For a long time, it negatively impacted my self-esteem and reinforced the idea that finding a relationship isn’t in the cards for me,” she adds. Which, yup, anything that makes you feel worse about yourself and pushes you to engage in negative self-talk is not great for your mental health.

Similarly, Rashelle, 41, says encountering people on the apps who didn’t match her efforts forced her to put herself out there over and over… and over again, which was a huge emotional drain. “It was a buildup of frustration over time. I was constantly making an effort to be vulnerable, personable, and engaging, only to find that most guys I matched with had little or no conversation skills,” she says. “Or they had great conversation initially and fell off the face of the earth after our first exchange.”

This kind of repetitive rejection can also hurt your mental health by making you feel hopeless, stuck, lonely, or less than, Johnson says. For a lot of people, especially those who identify outside of the thin beauty standard in the U.S., a lack of matches can feel like even more of a personal slight.

All of those mental health side effects of dating app culture are things licensed therapist Jet Setting Jasmine, LCSW, has noticed her clients talking about too. “It seems that this disappointment can turn into a sort of reflection about how the user may feel about themselves and their hopes for the future.”

Some research even suggests that using swipe-based dating apps is associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, and emotional distress than what we see in people who don’t use them, according to a 2020 Australian study (which didn’t factor in things like race, religion, economic status, or political ideals). That correlation could be caused by all the rejection, comparison, validation-seeking, and overwhelming amount of options and messages you might receive, Johnston says.

That said, there’s also the possibility that people who gravitate toward these apps might already have a tendency to be anxious, depressed, or distressed, per that 2020 study. That seems plausible since, if you don’t like approaching people IRL, you might find it easier to do so online.

Finally, swiping through people’s bio’s can hurt your feelings, even if you don’t even want to connect with them, he continues. The “no fats, no femmes, no Asians” kind of messaging you see a lot on gay male dating apps, for example, can impact you even if you immediately block those profiles.

Dating apps can be rough on your mental health – not for everyone, but especially those who aren’t considered very attractive in their area.

The Mental Health Industry

Let’s say that you do legitimately suffer from mental health problems like depression, severe anxiety, or something more severe and attempt to receive some form of help. The mental health industry just makes everything worse.

Not because mental health care never works but because the system has been designed to extract maximum profit from human suffering rather than actually resolve it. We’ve built an industry that needs people to stay sick to stay profitable.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s basic economics. Healthy people don’t generate recurring revenue. Managed symptoms do.

Climate Fears

For nearly days in January, I sat – glued to social media – as I watched the homes and neighborhoods of people burning to the ground in Los Angeles.

We were only one month into 2025, but we had already seen wildfires destroy over 12,000 homes and kill 29 people in Los Angeles. We’d also seen Storm Eowyn – a record-breaking cyclone – batter many parts of the UK, an earthquake in Tibet, and floods and landslides in Pekalongan, Indonesia.

Research shows that both adults and young people feel like their mental wellbeing is getting worse. In 2024, 15.5% of UK adults reported their mental health as either “bad” or “the worst it’s ever been”. In England alone, over 500 children are referred to mental health services every day for anxiety. Is it any wonder, when the world is literally burning? How could you watch the news and not be filled with anxiety for what is to come?

Brainwashing

Some governments also push cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). This aims to get people to change their thoughts and behaviors. Sounds great, doesn’t it? But what happens when your thoughts are based upon facts?

For example, being anxious about your future is completely understandable. After all, we watched the Pacific Palisades burn down as a direct result of a changing climate. Humans are hardwired to survive.

In the UK, waiting lists for mental health treatment are estimated to now be over one million. So professionals are going to tell one million people that their thinking is the problem. Rather than the capitalist system that’s sidelining their wellbeing and destroying the world around them.

Similarly, asking people to change their thoughts means they believe themselves and their thoughts are the problem, rather than the conditions they are living in. This means they are far less likely to question the status quo. Obviously, the government does not want people questioning their policies – because that creates a problem.

The Reality

What is clear to me is that the world is becoming a harder and harder place to exist in.

The cost of living is outrageously high across the western world.

Social media has turned us into attention addicts who can no longer be satisfied by our often boring and mundane lives.

Dating has become more shallow than ever with apps and has had a massive impact on both sexes, especially the motivations of young men, who feel that they need to be perfect in every way, shape or form, to match with a woman who they will love and will also love them back.

The mental health industry is a borderline scam and cares more about draining bank accounts than losing a paycheck by actually fixing problems.

To top it all off, there is a new climate disaster every week. It is only a matter of time before the nation’s mental health plummets to even greater lows.

Unless governments and people in general start to think about the causes, instead of putting a plaster on a gaping wound, we are simply adding fuel to an already raging fire – there’s only one way this will all end.